3D FEM simulation of stationary metal forming processes with applications to slitting and rolling

A computational method is presented for the 3D FEM simulation of stationary metal forming processes. The described method has been applied to model the slitting and shape rolling processes. Some results of these simulations are given, which show that the ALE formulation used is suitable for the simulation of such processes. In the ALE formulation the grid displacement is independent of the material displacement. Therefore, the displacement of the nodes has to be defined such that the movement of the free surfaces can be followed (mesh management) and the values of the state variables have to be calculated at the new nodal positions (transfer of state variables). Both topics are addressed in this paper. Also the possibility of modelling stationary crack propagation is treated.